


Binding Ties

by ApprenticedMagician



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Getting Together, Knights - Freeform, Witches, past Seth Gordon/Allison Reynolds - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24653854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticedMagician/pseuds/ApprenticedMagician
Summary: Renee was just a peaceful witch living her life in her woods when a Knight of the Realm stumbles in and gets lost, which must mean it's Tuesday. Except this knight, a beauty named Allison, seems reluctant to leave...
Relationships: Allison Reynolds/Renee Walker (All For The Game)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	Binding Ties

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DeyaAmaya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeyaAmaya/gifts).



> Happy exchange to andreil-minyasten! I hope you enjoy this domestic little piece, I tried to incorporate a little of the flower shop AU you requested, alongside witch!Renee and knight!Allison.

“I thought levithemums were blue,” said Allison, her chainmail sparkling as she gently examined the plant’s yellow bulb, which wriggled upon her touch. Renee felt an unusual amount of sympathy.

“They are,” Renee answered, pruning a wild batch of silver bells. They rang out a major scale in gratitude. “You’re touching a pox plant.”

Allison snatched her hand back and jumped a step away. The plant she had been fondling belched out a small amount of yellow gas, which she made haste to avoid. Then she wiped her hands all over her trousers, mumbling something under her breath, probably a variant of her usual speech regarding damn magic and its damn dangers. Renee hadn’t thought she was laughing, but she could feel Allison’s glare piercing her back all the same.

“They were definitely here yesterday,” she argued, as though Renee were playing a practical joke on her.

“Levithemums levitate, even as they grow,” Renee said, unbothered by the accusation. “Look up.”

Sure enough, just under the tree’s first branches, rested the blue flowers from yesterday, with roots and leaves waving freely in the wind like the ribbon in Allison’s own hair. Allison looked like she was trying not to be impressed.

“Witches,” Allison huffed, tossing her braid over her shoulder and marching off to some perfectly non-magical poppies.

Renee won't be hurt by that, knowing now it was mostly bluster. For all her distaste for magical plants and people, Allison found a reason to refuse every time Renee offered to escort her out of the woods:

‘I don’t feel like it.’  
‘It’s bad weather for travelling today.’  
‘You read misfortune in the stars last night.’  
‘Unless you come with me, as a Knight of the Realm, I can’t leave a young woman all alone in the Witches Woods. You’re defenseless.’

That last one had been Allison’s enduring favourite. Never mind that the young woman all alone in the Witches Woods _was_ the witch who _owned_ the woods. (No, really, the land was Renee’s family inheritance. She had the land deed pinned up above her mantle, written out in her great-great-grandfather's runic handwriting and preserved with a common charm.)

Renee also never bothered to mention that it was unbecoming of a Knight to impose so long on a maiden’s hospitality, since she suspected Allison might argue right back that there was no impropriety to be had between two women, and until she had a rebuttal for that, Renee was keeping her argument to herself. It somewhat rankled Renee to have relied so heavily on that one excuse for so long – propriety, whenever some daring or stupid knight had lost his way in her woods – that when she found herself without it she found herself as defenseless as Allison claimed.

-

As far as witches go, Renee’s ancestral story was a common one containing very few surprises. Her great-great-grandfather, as sole heir of the Shields nobility and wealth, left all the kingdom behind for a charming woodcarver he had met in the war. The family wealth was used to purchase the woods that they would spend the rest of their lives in and raise child after child.

One such child, Vanessa, and Renee’s great-grandmother, fell prey to vanity. On the day she discovered a single silver hair on her head, she went into a mad fit that lasted hours, recovering only when the spirits in the woods whispered to her of sorcery. Desperate, she consumed all the secrets the woods offered, eventually casting the following three spells on her own blood and flesh:

A spell to repel rot;  
a spell to prevent withering;  
and a spell for ever-growing roots, for Vanessa was most proud of her hair above all things.

Thus, Vanessa and all her descendants thereafter, with charms in their blood, grew to be witches. Although Vanessa’s efforts did not spare her the sags and wrinkles of age, they passed on three traits to her bloodline:

Goodness, for they could not accept or condone evil whenever it was met;  
kindness, for their caring nature as children never shriveled;  
fidelity, for the heart grows roots just as surely as the hairs on our heads.

-

It had been a month since Allison stumbled into her woods and Renee was beginning to think that was less accidental than Allison’s made it seem all this time.

“It’s not like you have signs posted,” Allison had groused, back when Renee had sent her off in the right direction, only to find Allison hopelessly back at the hut the same evening. “Or a talking fox even, to lend strange advice. I can hardly be faulted for getting turned ‘round.”

(Renee had tried signposts once before, back when a different knight or peddling merchant would get caught up in her home every other week. It hadn’t helped a single soul, to her dismay, because the naughtier forest creatures kept moving them or defacing the letters. It was for that same reason she had never employed animal guides.)

Now, Allison doesn’t even pretend. Renee will start each day with some offhand comment about this direction leading out to that spot in the Reynolds Kingdom. Allison will swipe up a basket and begin marching down Renee’s pointed direction, leaving her sword and shield behind, look back and say, “Daylight’s wasting,” as though Renee had merely pointed out an interesting direction for foraging.

“Isn’t someone missing you?” Renee had asked, the third time Allison thoughtlessly accompanied her for the day.

“Hm?” Allison had hummed, distracted by a blushing rose that shied away from her touch. “Why would someone miss me?”

Renee was taken aback. “Don’t you have a home? Parents, siblings, a husband?”

Allison had scoffed, and tossed her hair, unbraided that day. Spun gold wouldn’t have shone so beautifully. “Destroyed,” she said, without specifying what she had lost or how.

Goodness and kindness had prevented Renee from prying further.

Fidelity had made her stop pushing Allison onto paths she wasn’t searching for.

-

Winter was on its way. Allison was not.

They were enjoying hot tea by the fire, the woods too dark to forage in the evening like in summertime. Renee had only one blanket, having buried her mother in the second two years ago. Allison didn’t seem to mind sharing.

“His name was Seth,” Allison said, between one moment of peace and the next, now a designed moment of tension. Renee sat up straighter.

Allison was hardly breathing. “He was a blacksmith and I loved him. I was... me and he loved me. We were going to marry.” She fondled the red ribbon woven in her hair and Renee suddenly saw it for the hand-fasting ribbon it had always been. Even in the fire’s dim light, it was tattered and sun-bleached. It was dying.

“My parents made that impossible,” she continued, eyes far afield. “They wanted something different for me, so I made that impossible for them and ran away.”

Renee felt lost for words, core empty of consolations. “That must have been hard for you.”

“Hardly,” Allison scoffed. “I didn’t make it three days before I found you and you’re not exactly starved or wanting.” She gestured to the cabin, large enough for a family of five and standing strong and sturdy, well-decorated and cared for over the generations. The house wanted for almost nothing; not fruit, nor vegetables, nor dried flowers, not even a draft to discomfort any who resided inside. 

“I’m glad you ran here,” Renee said, realizing the one thing her home had been missing.

Allison leaned her head atop Renee’s ever-growing silver hair. “Me too.”

-

Another knight wound up lost in her woods and Renee realized how long it had been since her patience had been tested.

Allison _thrived_ under the gentleman’s attentions, tossing her hair and batting her eyes and laughing like a siren out of the old stories. She unsheathed her sword for the first time in weeks, challenged into a friendly exercise where she emerged the indisputable victor. Renee helped the knight save face when he began blustering, and she pulled him away to a path out.

Allison suggested a bath when she returned, still sweaty and grinning, ribbon falling loose in her hair.

Renee wasn’t sure what colour her face turned to get Allison to laugh like _that_ again, but she declined the invitation.

Goodness made her begin supper instead – to calm the sudden lurching and squirming of her gut, if nothing else.

Kindness and fidelity made her offer a comb to take to Allison’s bath.

Allison’s smile tamed, became shy, and she pressed it back into Renee’s hands. “I’d prefer if you do it after,” she said.

Nothing in her let Renee say ‘no’.

-

Seth’s ribbon wasn’t in Allison’s hair when she came back. Renee doesn’t say a word once she sees it tied ‘round her wrist, only sat herself behind Allison and reached for spun gold to fall through her fingers. Allison kept up a light meaningless chatter: about the cold river water, the ineptitude of the knight’s earlier form, the plants she recognized along the way.

“How long will the winter last?” she asked.

“How would I know?” Renee answered, lost in the rhythm of push and pull.

“You scry the night sky every night,” Allison said, turning her head in search of Renee’s lilac eyes. “Can’t you read the fallout of the year? Wars and harvests and royal births?”

Renee nudged her back forward. Now she had new tangles to unfurl. “None of those things include the winter season,” she chided, smiling to remember when she had asked her mother the exact same thing. “Besides, there are too many clouds to read the stars tonight.”

Allison hummed and said, “Then maybe the winter will last forever, and I’ll never be able to leave this place.”

Renee paused, comb caught in precious metal. Goodness told her not to trap; kindness told her to set free; fidelity told her...

The comb resumed and she said, “Or maybe I’ll charm the snow to fall forever, and create the lasting winter that you need.”

Allison laughed. “Oh foul enchantress,” she teased, leaning back again, “how foolish my mother was, to deny me my love once.”

Renee smiled, dared to touch a hand down silky skin. “Have I ensnared you, brave knight?”

Allison’s eyes cleared of everything but sincerity. “Completely,” she said, and brought Renee down for a kiss that made her soul _sing._

-

The next morning, Renee finds purple in Allison’s half-woven hair.

The faded red ribbon of old is tied ‘round her scabbard, which lays peacefully still against the wall furthest from the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
